Bowl Projections: The last week of the regular season will break some bowl hopes

Welcome to the final week of the 2017 college football regular season. Where has the time gone?

The weekend’s most pivotal game is the Iron Bowl between Auburn and Alabama. The winner wins the SEC West and will be facing a win-and-in game in the SEC Championship Game for the College Football Playoff.

If Auburn pulls off the upset, chaos could happen. A one-loss Alabama team could be like Ohio State a year ago and get into the playoff at 11-1. We’ll spend much more time worrying about that scenario if it happens on Saturday.

There are a handful of games between 5-6 teams that will decide who gets to go to a bowl and who doesn’t. In the Big Ten, the winner of Indiana and Purdue is bowling. Same for Colorado and Utah and Cal vs. UCLA in the Pac-12. And the victor of the Conference-USA matchup between Middle Tennessee State and Old Dominion gets to go to a bowl.

All of those games are good for the bowl picture. The odds are pretty good that all bowl slots will be filled by teams 6-6 or better.